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Junos 2014: Most of the 42 awards handed out at a boozy gala Saturday

Arcade Fire emerges from pre-broadcast gala in Winnipeg with a trophy for Alternative Album of the Year for Reflektor.

Arcade Fire performs Friday at the 15th edition of the Vive Latino music festival in Mexico City. On Saturday they won a Juno for Alternative Album of the Year at the pre-broadcast gala in Winnipeg. (Rebecca Blackwell / The Associated Press)

WINNIPEG—So 85.7 per cent of the 2014 Juno Awards were handed out Saturday night and, at this point, they’re anybody’s game.

Frontrunning six-time nominees Arcade Fire emerged from the pre-broadcast gala at the Winnipeg Convention Centre, where 36 of the 42 total Junos were dispensed Saturday night, with a single award: a trophy for Alternative Album of the Year for last year’s sprawling double-disc opus and transatlantic No. 1 hit Reflektor.

Competition for Juno bragging rights thus remained exceedingly strong heading into Sunday’s closing ceremony at the MTS Centre — to be broadcast live at 9 p.m. Toronto time on CTV — since several of the Arcade Fire’s principal rivals in the big categories also left the boozy Saturday dinner smiling with one award apiece of their own.

Five-time nominee Serena Ryder, for instance, has already been dubbed the 2014 Junos’ Artist of the Year before she takes the podium to host Sunday’s broadcast with Classified and Johnny Reid.

On the four-time-nominee front, Toronto rapper Drake pocketed Rap Recording of the Year for the cross-border smash Nothing Was the Same, and Calgary-bred twin sisters Tegan & Sara Quin notched Pop Album of the Year for Heartthrob.

If you’re keeping score in the “Battle of the Juno Hosts,” meanwhile, expat-Scot-from-the-Prairies Johnny Reid has a Juno of his own — an Adult Contemporary Album of the Year statuette for A Christmas Gift to You — to match Ryder’s. And Classified still has time to catch up during the Sunday broadcast if his “Inner Ninja” manages to beat out songs by Arcade Fire, Serena Ryder, Tegan & Sara and five-time nominee Michael Bublé for Single of the Year.

We’ll see, then, where all this goes. It could go anywhere.

As for the rest of Saturday night’s Juno gala, it went pretty much where it always goes. Forever. Or for 3½ hours anyway. For the first time this year, casual observers could stream the pre-broadcast Juno gala online at home, but lord knows why you’d actually do that. Most of the people who actually attend the thing start tuning it out half an hour in because, frankly, by then it’s already clear there are several more crushingly dull and long-winded hours to come and everyone starts sucking down as much free booze as they can find until the bar shuts down.

It makes for some fun moments backstage at least.

Halifax rocker Matt Mays wasn’t there when they announced he’d just won Rock Album of the Year for Coyote, for example, because he’d wandered off from the room and, as he would later explain to host Jian Ghomeshi, got caught up in “talking about surfing with a buddy out there.”

“Sorry about that, everybody. That was lame,” he apologized when he finally made it to the podium.

“I was in the lobby, just hangin’ with a buddy,” he told the media hordes. “I never expected to win. That’s why I was having a pee. I never expected to do it.”

Other notable backstage visitors included British Columbia-born country singer Dean Brody, who confirmed that winning a Country Album of the Year Juno for Crop Circles was more satisfying than recently being named one of Hello! Canada’s “50 Most Beautiful People” (“The other one is just ammunition for all my friends, that’s all that is,” he laughed), and 23-year-old Breakthrough Artist of the Year Brett Kissel, who was simply so sweet and genuine and excited about his victory that even this straight male kinda had a crush on him when he left.

“This gives me an opportunity to put my foot down on the gas pedal and not let go for as long as I can,” said Kissel, who confessed he’d kept ticket stubs from a 2006 George Strait concert and the 2002 Canadian Country Music Awards tucked in his hat on the night for good luck.

He also curried further favour with the media hordes by thanking them profusely for every single question they asked.

“This is a memory I’ll never forget, so thanks to you all for making this such a great night,” he said as he left, leaving Winnipeg radio host Ace Burpee, the mediator in the press room, to dub him “your new favourite Canadian.” No one disagreed.

Beloved Toronto singer/songwriter Ron Sexsmith, for his part, last won a Juno Award in 2005, which was when the Juno circus last came to Winnipeg. His win for Adult Alternative Album of the Year for Forever Endeavour thus prompted a question from the press corps as to whether the city was a source of good fortune for him.

“Well, now it is, yeah. It’s Lucky Town for me now,” he said, adding that while it was his indeed his third Juno overall the tally had proven somewhat less accurate over time. “The first Juno I won in 1998, my ex-wife has. So I really only have two.”

“I was just sitting there eating my cake and they said my name,” he said. “I’ve pretty much just been staring at the ground all night.”

And the winner of the most ill-fated backstage appearance? Toronto’s Justin Rutledge, forced to start his address to the media by explaining he’d just spilled beer on his pants and then conclude it by telling some doting female fan on the floor the sexual position that he felt best represented his music.

WORLD MUSIC ALBUM OF THE YEAR: David Buchbinder and Odessa/Havana, Walk to the Sea.

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